The Clarity Act is poised to ignite a surge in crypto ‘yield-as-a-service’. According to Joe Vollono, Chief Commercial Officer of STBL, the bill’s limitations on yield-generating crypto products could drive the industry away from passive ‘hold-to-earn’ models and towards AI-enhanced, compliant yield frameworks. What you should know: — Proposed regulations may compel crypto businesses to transition from passive yield strategies to active, compliant capital approaches. — Vollono mentioned that AI-driven treasury, lending, and collateral solutions could emerge as a significant infrastructure layer for crypto. — Banks, concerned about deposit losses, might end up participating in the stablecoin economy instead of competing against it. Vollono believes that the Clarity Act could lead to the establishment of a completely new market for ‘yield-as-a-service’. Central to the discussion is Section 404 of the proposed bill, which would prevent Digital Asset Service Providers (DASPs) and their affiliates from providing yield solely based on the act of holding a digital asset. This provision has the potential to fundamentally alter how crypto users generate returns, steering the market away from passive ‘hold-to-earn’ products and towards more proactive, compliant yield-generation strategies. «What this effectively does is shift the industry from a hold-to-earn market to a use-to-earn market,» Vollono told Decryptnews in an interview. «You’re going to need compliant yield strategies to generate rewards on what would otherwise be idle capital.» The Clarity Act has already passed through the Senate Banking Committee and is now anticipated to proceed to the full Senate, where it will be combined with the Senate Agriculture Committee’s version of the bill before being reconciled in the House. An optimistic timeline suggests a full vote could happen as early as July, after which regulators would have approximately 12 months to put the framework into action. Vollono, who has over seven years of experience at Morgan Stanley and has worked at SIFMA focusing on industry advocacy and market structure, stated that the implications of the Clarity Act go well beyond yield products. He contended that regulatory clarity could finally facilitate significant institutional engagement in crypto markets. «Once these issues are resolved, it allows capital at scale to enter the market,» he stated. «That’s the real catalyst here.» The passage of the Clarity Act is broadly regarded as a potential turning point for crypto markets since it would create the first comprehensive U.S. regulatory framework for digital assets, putting an end to years of ambiguity regarding the classification of tokens under the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The legislation would provide clearer guidelines for exchanges, brokers, stablecoin issuers, and decentralized finance platforms, a move that many analysts believe is essential before large institutional investors, banks, and asset managers can deploy capital on a large scale. Advocates argue that regulatory clarity could mitigate legal risks, enhance consumer protections, and furnish traditional financial institutions with the compliance framework required to develop crypto products and services domestically rather than offshore. The potential outcome, according to Vollono, is the rise of an intermediary layer of infrastructure providers concentrating on compliant yield generation. He anticipates that many of these services will be driven by artificial intelligence acting as a coordinating layer for regulated capital flows. Among the likely beneficiaries are decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure providers, vault curators, collateral management platforms, automated treasury services, lending markets, and rewards systems. «All of this can be automated by AI in a regulated market,» he stated. Vollono noted that the foundational technology stack is already in place, highlighting smart contracts, oracles, DeFi networks, and API-based infrastructure that could be adapted to function within a regulated context. «This creates a whole new world,» he remarked. The legislative debate has also highlighted friction between traditional banks and the crypto sector, particularly concerning stablecoins and the migration of deposits. «There’s a lot at stake,» Vollono commented. «Banks are worried about deposit flight, but I think that concern is largely overstated.» He explained that the conventional fractional reserve banking system relies on banks maintaining substantial capital bases that can be lent out to generate credit and liquidity. If deposits shift towards tokenized dollars or yield-bearing blockchain products, that model may face challenges. However, Vollono expressed that he views the eventual compromise as advantageous for existing institutions rather than a threat to their existence. «Smart incumbents are going to compete,» he asserted. «Banks don’t necessarily have to give up market share.» He proposed that banks could ultimately collateralize reserves to issue their own stablecoins and create compliant yield within the Clarity framework, paving the way for entirely new business models. This dynamic is core to STBL’s own proposition. The company positions itself as «stablecoin 2.0,» advocating for a departure from the traditional centralized issuer model that currently dominates the market. Instead, STBL is developing infrastructure that allows users to mint stablecoins backed by real-world assets while retaining the economics produced by the underlying reserves. «Users that provide value into the ecosystem should participate in the economics,» Vollono stated. The infrastructure developed by the company is designed to facilitate compliant yield management while enabling users, rather than centralized issuers, to capture the yield generated by reserve assets. For Vollono, the Clarity Act could provide the regulatory framework essential to accelerate that transition. «I’ll tell you what the Act makes clear: money-as-a-service has arrived,» he added.